Royal Dutch Shell intends to sell eight of its fourteen refineries in a divestment plan that is expected to be completed in 2025. However, the Anglo-Dutch company would consider shutting the facilities down if it failed to find a buyer, CFO Jessica Uhl said. Shell will keep operations in essential markets tied to its chemical business to integrate its refining and chemical businesses.
The six complexes that Shell intends to keep include the Norco site near New Orleans, the Deer Park site in Texas as well as facilities in Singapore, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands. Shell will also continue operations at chemical plants near those sites, including its Geismar site in Ascension Parish. Despite the company outlined intentions to keep Singapore refinery, market talks have it that Shell will close Pulau Bukom refinery. According to the company’s website, Bukom manufacturing site has developed into one of the most important Shell production sites in the world. Bukom is the largest wholly-owned Shell refinery globally in terms of crude distillation capacity (500,000 barrels per day). It is also home to a world-class Ethylene Cracker Complex (up to a million tonnes per annum) and a Butadiene Extraction Unit (155,000 tonnes per annum). The site also produces base oils, which is sent to Shell’s Tuas Lubricants Plant. Bitumen produced on Bukom, along with lubricants produced from base oils, are supplied to China and across South East Asia.
Elsewhere, Shell’s Convent site, located along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is on the list for sale. Several months ago, the company notified local officials that it was testing the market for a potential sale of the site and its associated facilities. The Convent refinery can process up to 240,000 bpd of crude to produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, propane, and butane. It was established in 1967 as a Texaco refinery. Now, 700 Shell employees and 400 contractors are working in the refinery.
Other Shell’s refineries which are on the list for potential sale or closure include a site in Mobile, Alabama; a refinery in Puget Sound, Washington; as well as facilities in Denmark and Canada. Shell executives also said that the company would focus more on the production of biofuels, synthetic fuels, and hydrogen.
